


Your Darkest Night

by misbegotten



Category: Bourne (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Jossed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-27
Updated: 2010-02-27
Packaged: 2018-07-28 07:41:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7631116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misbegotten/pseuds/misbegotten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's an interesting profile, Nicky thinks. Nose a little too long, ears a little too elfin. It is almost enough to make him seem inherently playful, but Jason Bourne doesn't do playful. Not anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Darkest Night

**Author's Note:**

> Uploading an old work. Takes place after _The Bourne Ultimatum_. For content warning, see the end notes.

It's an interesting profile, Nicky thinks. Nose a little too long, ears a little too elfin. It is almost enough to make him seem inherently playful, but Jason Bourne doesn't do playful. Not anymore.

He doesn't tense when she sits on the barstool next to him. More correctly, he doesn't get more tense. His shoulders might not tighten up at her approach, hands might not curl around the lip of his generic glass of beer, but Jason is always tense at a meet. She remembers how long it took his muscles to unclench after a meeting. Her own hands would tire trying to work out the tension at the base of his neck, down the slope of his shoulder, along the bicep, the knotty wrists, but she pushed herself past the strain on her own muscles in order to bring him some comfort.

He gave her comfort in his own way. But not anymore.

Nicky orders a martini from the bartender, who skips their usual banter at the foreboding look on Jason's face. Jason is still scanning the room behind them using the mirror over the bar when her drink comes, and she takes a long sip while she waits for him to get to the point. He doesn't, which surprises her. As she retrieves one of the olives and pops it in her mouth, she swivels on the barstool so she can lean back on the bar. "You called this get together, Jason. What's on your mind?"

Jason's not drinking his beer. "You're a regular here," he says abruptly. The bartender is already mixing another drink for her, which is sufficient reply to the statement. "You shouldn't do that."

Her lips twitch. "Shouldn't what? Drink?"

Jason fishes the last olive out of her drink and hands her the toothpick. She's enjoying teasing him. It shouldn't feel so good, and it will definitely make her depressed later. But she leans forward and bites the olive off the toothpick, dangerously close to his hand.

Something flashes in his eyes, and she can't help but wonder if he's thinking about Marie. Hell, if there are three things you can know for sure about Jason Bourne it's that he won't stop until he gets what he wants, he won't tell you more than he wants you to know, and he's always fucking thinking about Marie.

"I'll be gone in less than two weeks. Let me worry about it, okay? I may not be you, but I know how to cover my tracks." She gives a nod to the bartender, and another drink is before her in seconds.

"I found you," Jason says.

Nicky drains half the glass and laughs bitterly. "People aren't as interested in finding me." _As they are in finding you_ goes unspoken, but understood. And if she has made it a little easier for Jason to follow her trail, that's her own business.

"I remembered something." Jason's never been good at small talk.

Nicky's not good at hiding fear from Jason. With others, she was very, very good. She suspects Conklin bullied her badly to see if she'd rattle, but she never did to his face. It was one of the many reasons, she assumes, that she got the Paris job with Treadstone.

Jason is looking at her, measuring her expression. "Anything helpful?" Anything that can get us in from the cold, she thinks with a bit of longing.

Jason takes a sip of his beer. Now who is hiding behind a prop? "Very. I remembered why the mission went bad."

There is no need to ask what mission. It's The Mission. The one that took his memory, among other things.

"You got shot," she says flatly. There are a million reasons she doesn't want to go down this path. "That tends to do it." Which is bullshit. Getting shot never stopped him before. Treadstone operatives thrive -- thrived -- on pain, channeling it into focus and determination.

"There were kids," Jason continues, unperturbed by the interruption. "Wombosi's kids."

Her heart stutters. "So what?"

His voice is even. "I remembered, Nicky. I finally _remembered_."

She nearly drops the martini glass, but manages to put it back on the bar. Her purse -- gun inside, bag never out of sight -- is already in her hand and she's pushing her way to the door. Jason throws some money on the bar and lets her get outside because it's more convenient for him, but as soon as they hit the street his hand is on her shoulder.

"Why didn't you say something?" he demands harshly.

Nicky keeps the volume low, not wanting to draw attention to themselves, but her tone is equally sharp. "When? When, Jason?" She pulls out of his grasp and starts heading down the sidewalk to her apartment a few blocks south. "When you were staring at me like a stranger? When you threatened to kill me? When you shoved me out of your life as fast as you could?" She's walking fast, nearly running, and feels it in her chest despite daily workouts on the elliptical. Jason, damn him, might as well be a ghost next to her, except that she can feel the heat radiating off him, anger and sorrow in waves so palpable it makes her breath catch.

Jason doesn't answer, but when they reach her building he takes the key from her trembling hand and opens the outer door, then leads the way up the stairs without comment. She waits while he checks the door -- the hair on the sill, the invisible tape on the upper corner still intact -- and keeps her distance as they enter. It's unlikely that there's anybody lurking to kill her, but Jason does his checks by rote. She tosses her purse on the counter while he clears each room and gets two glasses to go with a bottle of red she's had stashed in a cupboard. By the time he is done she's poured the wine and taken a fortifying swallow.

Jason accepts the offered glass, maybe seeing something in her face that says arguing is not a good idea right now, and after a hesitant sip raises a brow. "This is..."

"Yeah," she says, tired and miserable about the conversation they're about to have. "You always liked it." She sits on the couch. "How much do you remember?"

He's still standing. He always did act like getting comfortable would kill him. No doubt he was right. "A lot more than I did six months ago."

Silence rests uneasily between them. She takes another drink, and then Jason is there on the couch next to her, pulling the glass from her hand and putting both on the end table. "What happened to the baby, Nicky?"

Oh god, she's not going to cry. She is not going to start fucking crying over this. Not again. She turns her head, blinks several times to force the tears back, and answers harshly, "What do you think happened, Jason? It's dead."

His hand is strong and calloused, and his touch against her cheek makes her want to melt into him. "Tell me," he says.

"When I saw you that night in Paris... I knew you were gone. Then you left with Marie, and I did what I had to do."

Jason's hand drops away from her face; he's stone again. "You didn't have to."

She shakes her head and looks away. "I didn't have anyone to protect us."

Jason's up, prowling the room with that reserved intensity that made their relationship so enticing and frustrating. She watches him for a moment and then says mildly, "If you break anything I'll have to pay for it. If you shoot anything, we'll have the gendarmes here en masse."

He stops pacing. "What was it?" he asks abruptly.

She blinks again, one, two, three times. "A girl." A girl, their little girl, oh god it hurts, her little girl is dead and she's alive and it hurts. Nicky doesn't realize his arms are around her until the sobs give way to sniffles and she's forced to think of a graceful way not to get snot on his t-shirt. Oh, hell. His t-shirts usually have worse things than snot on them.

"I'm sorry," she says, though she's not entirely sure whether she's apologizing for the t-shirt, the abortion, not telling him sooner, or falling in love with him in the first place. Tick the box for "all of the above" maybe.

There's nothing in Jason Bourne's arsenal that can make this right.

"It was always difficult for me, with you," she echoes sadly.

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: discussion of past abortion.


End file.
